


The Words Don't Reach

by Namarie



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: But it's only sad for secondary reasons, Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Season/Series 02, a little bit of hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Namarie/pseuds/Namarie
Summary: It had to have been another cruel lie. Otherwise, how was Wyatt going to get through this?





	The Words Don't Reach

**Author's Note:**

> TW: possible (but probably not!) death of an unborn child.

~~  
When the moment finally came, the only mercy was how little time there was to think.

Rufus had been back with the Time Team for several months, rescued from 1888 Chinatown thanks to the incredible intervention of Wyatt and Lucy from the future. He and Jiya had had almost two weeks of uninterrupted time together after they all moved their new location – time in which the Mothership had not jumped at all. Wyatt tried not to be jealous of the two of them. They definitely deserved it, even though he and Lucy were still only moving back toward each other at a very slow, hesitant pace. But then had come three jumps in as many days. They had scrambled to keep up with Emma (and Jessica – she was always there, too). Thankfully, Emma had resumed a more normal schedule after that – if there was such a thing in this insane life.

This was the ninth mission with Rufus back, by Wyatt's count. They were in Dublin, Ireland in April of 1848, right in the thick of the Potato Famine. Lucy had told them that noted Irish nationalist John Mitchel's trial was today. If he were assassinated instead of being deported to Bermuda for “treason felony” (a charge the British government had just invented), not only would he never write his famous Jail Journal that inspired his countrymen to continue to fight for Irish independence, but his ideas about passive resistance – which eventually led to the development of the boycott – might die with him.

“Of course,” Lucy went on with a grimace, “once he escapes and gets to the US, Mitchel is also famous for being a supporter of the American Confederacy and slavery. So he's also pretty terrible.”

“Fantastic,” grumbled Rufus. “But we're saving him, anyway?”

“Maybe we can try to change his mind in the process,” Wyatt put in. “We should give it a shot, anyway.”

“I guess.” Rufus looked around at Wyatt, Lucy, and Flynn. “But by the way, just because I'm the one who's black doesn't mean it's my job to change his mind. Okay?”

That turned out to be irrelevant, however. Emma and her men – and Jessica, always Jessica – were mixed in with the crowd outside the courthouse. They kept catching brief glimpses of them, but there were no clear shots. Lucy hadn't mentioned anything about a riot, but as they got a little closer, it sure seemed like that was the way things were going to go. Wyatt looked over at Flynn. He could see the man was having the same thoughts. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

“What?” Lucy gave him a frown. “No, we can't! We have to protect Mitchel!”

“Things out here are about to get very ugly,” Flynn said urgently. “We need to find a different way in. Otherwise we're just going to get caught up in a riot.”

“But--” Lucy let out a frustrated sigh. Then she shook her head. “Fine. Okay. Another way in.”

Somehow, they managed to extricate themselves from the crowd without any of the Rittenhouse folks harassing them. And somehow, they even found a back alley that seemed likely as an alternate entrance. But before they could start to move toward it, from the alley where they were hiding, another man came toward it from the opposite direction. He was dressed exactly like most of the upper-class men in the area, but there was something about the way he was walking … the way he kept glancing around...

And that was definitely a gun under his jacket. “Flynn,” Wyatt whispered, nudging him with his elbow. “That's got to be--”

“The sleeper,” Flynn finished grimly. “I agree. Perhaps going inside to accomplish this assassination.”

“Take him out, then!” Rufus said in a loud whisper of his own. “And then we can get the hell out of here.”

“There's no shot from here.”

Lucy scanned the area. “Then we've got to find a better vantage point. Quickly.”

~

It was done. Wyatt ran with the others down a few narrow side streets, away from the clamor that had erupted when Flynn fired the killshot. Part of him was wondering if this was really going to be that easy – but most of him was just focusing on getting everyone out of here safely.

And then, when they were still several blocks away from the edge of the city, where they had left the Lifeboat, they started taking fire from above. The shots were coming from the roofs of the buildings they were running between. “Take cover!” Wyatt shouted, over the racket of the bullets being fired. He dragged Lucy into a doorway, and was hugely relieved to see Flynn do the same with Rufus across the alley. Then, making sure Lucy was behind him, he peered out of the doorway to return fire.

For a few seconds, the two sides exchanged fire with no result. Wyatt couldn't make out who was shooting at them from his angle, but judging by the sound and the frequency of fire, these were modern weapons. Rittenhouse, of course. Flynn got a few good shots in then from his vantage point, and the number of people shooting at them decreased.

Then one of those who was firing from the opposite roof crept closer. Wyatt saw his opening. He took a few seconds to aim. When he pulled the trigger, he knew before it hit that he had killed the target.

The figure staggered back a step, and then fell forward off the roof. That was when he saw the color of her hair, and saw a brief glimpse of her shocked expression before her body hit the ground with a sickening thud. _Oh my God._

It was all he could do not to drop his weapon and fall to the ground, too. But even as he heard Lucy gasp behind him, he knew there was still the job to finish. They still all had to get out of here.

Whether it was because of their last casualty (oh God, oh God, _it was her_ , why did she put herself in the middle of a firefight?) or the ones Flynn had taken out, the rest of the Rittenhouse forces seemed to give up not too long after that. He heard someone – a male voice, not Emma – shout something, and they retreated. Wyatt and Lucy stayed where they were for several seconds until the sounds of footsteps faded. He was doing his best to focus on that, even as his gaze was continually drawn to the body of the woman in the alley in front of him.

Finally, he couldn't hold back any longer. He choked out a, “Stay here” to Lucy, and then ran out into the alley, gun raised at the rooftops. But there was no one there.

“Wyatt!”

He ignored her and Rufus, both calling his name at the same time, and crouched down next to Jessica. Because it was her, of course. He turned her over, trying futilely to avoid the blood, and touched her face once. Then he closed her eyes.

“Wyatt,” said Rufus. He was standing next to him, but Wyatt didn't look up. “Wyatt, shit, man, I-- I don't know what to say. But I do know we need to get out of here. They could come back, or the cops could show up.”

Wyatt nodded. Nausea was threatening to overwhelm him, but he made himself stand up and push it back for now. Rufus was right. The mission wasn't over yet.

Tearing his gaze away from Jessica's dead body ( _again_ , it was happening again), Wyatt avoided looking at the faces of any of his team. “Come on,” he said, vaguely relieved that he'd been able to speak.

He was also relieved that no one tried to comfort him or say anything to him on the way back to the Lifeboat. He was positive anything like that would have robbed him of the ability to function. As it was, as soon as they were within yards of the ship, that was the end of his strength. He stopped running. His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees, throwing up everything in his stomach.

Things got pretty blurry after that. He was aware that someone – probably Rufus and Flynn – pulled him to his feet eventually. It felt like it was happening to him from a distance, though. He allowed them to help him to the Lifeboat, and then was even sort of present enough to climb up into it himself – although he slipped once and managed to bash his knee on some metal part of the machine. The pain didn't really register, and neither did the worried words from Rufus and Lucy.

And then he was inside the Lifeboat, sitting in his seat, with Lucy buckling him in. She gave him a shaky smile when she looked up and saw him looking back at her. “You going to be okay?”

He swallowed and managed a nod. He wasn't sure if it was true. There was something he was trying really, really hard not to think about right now that had to do with Jessica, something she had told him last time they spoke, and if he let himself think about it, he was going to fall to pieces, so he just wasn't going to do it.

The blurriness came back after that. It was strong enough this time that Wyatt didn't even notice when the Lifeboat landed and everyone else started to move around him. But then Lucy was in front of him again, unbuckling his straps and then taking his hands in hers. She felt warm, he noted dimly. And … and she was saying his name. “Wyatt. Wyatt, can you stand?”

He blinked. The world came back into focus, mostly. He tried to take stock. “I--” He cleared his throat. “I don't know.” His knee hurt. What had happened to it?

“Okay.” She was speaking very gently. No one else was in the Lifeboat with them. “Well, how about we try, all right?”

There was blood on his hands. And his knee. But the blood on his hands wasn't his. He took a sharp breath. Jessica.

“Let's get you out of here,” Lucy was saying. She was still holding his hands in hers, even with the blood on them. He let out a wordless cry and pulled them away from her. _No._

“Wyatt--”

He shot to his feet, pushing past her and stumbling out of the Lifeboat and down the steps. There were other people there, but he couldn't really seem to focus on them. That was when the lightheadedness he had noticed vaguely when he got up, added to how numb his legs were feeling, caught up to him. The last thing he saw for a while was the ground rushing up to meet him.

~~  
Lucy shifted in her chair, looking at the clock and stifling a yawn. It was getting pretty late. On a normal night, she would at least be getting ready to go to bed by now. But she didn't want to leave. She didn't know how long Wyatt was going to sleep with the combination of emotional exhaustion, hitting his head, and the mild sedative the doctor had administered, but she wanted to be here for him when he woke up. She had a strong feeling that him waking up alone would be a really bad idea.

“You know, you could probably just use the bed.”

Lucy looked up, startled. Jiya had come into the medical wing so quietly she hadn't heard her until she spoke. “What?”

“I said, you could just get your pajamas and stuff and use the bed next to his,” said Jiya, coming closer. “No one else is using it.”

The idea was worth considering, Lucy thought. But it would involve her leaving for a little while at least. “Um, right.”

“I could stay with him while you get ready,” her friend suggested, nodding toward the sleeping soldier. “He's going to be out for a good while longer, I'm betting.”

Lucy hesitated for a moment, and then nodded and stood up. “Okay. I'll be right back,” she said. Then as she passed Jiya, she put out a hand to rest it on her shoulder briefly. “Thanks, Jiya.”

“You're welcome.”

As she hurried to brush her teeth and get ready for bed, Lucy couldn't help mentally replaying the events of the end of the mission, over and over. Wyatt, protecting her in the alley so that Rittenhouse had no shot at her. Wyatt, shooting at his ex-wife and then freezing when he realized who he'd just killed. His face when he kneeled down next to her body. The devastation in his eyes when he had glanced at her belly and then away again. And then of course, his collapse when they reached the Lifeboat. She had been amazed he'd lasted that long. But she knew he had experience compartmentalizing, locking down his emotions until it was safe to react to what had happened. No wonder he'd gone into shock. Rufus and Flynn hadn't hesitated to help him get into the Lifeboat; thank goodness they'd both been there. It had been frankly terrifying to see him collapse _again_ after he fled from the Lifeboat, though, especially since he had actually passed out and no one got to him in time to keep his head from hitting the ground. Hence the overnight stay in the med wing.

Picking up a blanket from her bed (grateful that their new living arrangement came with nicer furnishings as well as private rooms for those who wanted them), Lucy fought back another surge of rage at Jessica Logan. There was no way of knowing for certain, obviously, if she had really been pregnant. But Lucy hoped with all her heart that had been just another cruel lie. Otherwise, she wasn't sure how they were going to help Wyatt through this.

When she got back to the med wing, Jiya reported that Wyatt hadn't woken or even moved much while she was gone. “Don't stay up too late,” was her closing comment, as she left the two of them alone.

Lucy took Wyatt's hand in hers for a few more seconds, squeezing it gently. “I'm here, Wyatt,” she told him. “You're not alone.” Then she scooted the bed next to his closer, lay down, and spread the blanket over herself. She fell asleep right away.

She wasn't sure at first what had woken her up some hours later. It was still dark, and at first she didn't even know where she was. But then she heard the sound from the bed next to hers, and remembered.

Wyatt was murmuring something in his sleep, it sounded like. He wasn't thrashing, but he was restless. Lucy pushed back her covers and went to his side. “Wyatt,” she said, slightly above a whisper, “you're dreaming. It's just a dream.”

He didn't seem to hear her. When she bent closer to repeat her words, she saw with a painful squeeze of her heart that a few tears had rolled down his cheeks. And now she could hear that one of the words he was saying, over and over again, was “No.”

“Wyatt.” She spoke more loudly, and then very carefully reached out a hand to touch his forehead. “You're dreaming.”

His eyes opened slowly, and he sighed when he focused on her. Then he shut them again and went back to sleep.

Lucy let out a breath. Hopefully they both could sleep until morning now.

And they did – if somewhere around five AM really counted as morning. That was when Lucy heard Wyatt calling her name, bringing her out of slumber quickly. She sat up, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Hi,” she said, meeting his gaze in the dim light of the (far too early) morning.

He smiled a little. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

She scooted to the edge of her bed, wondering at his calmness. “I just-- I thought you wouldn't want to wake up alone today.”

His forehead creased. “What do you mean, 'today'? I don't--” he said, and then, just like that, she watched as realization crashed over him. All traces of happiness faded, to be replaced by horror and guilt. In the time it took for her to get up and cross the short distance to his bed, he had started crying silently.

She felt tears prick at her own eyes, and she cleared her throat. “Wyatt...”

She wasn't sure what she had been about to say. But when she trailed off, he just wiped the tears off his face and rasped, “I killed her. God, I killed them both!”

“No,” Lucy said, taking one of his hands and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “No, Wyatt, she-- she can't have been pregnant. If she were, would she have put herself in harm's way over and over, these past months?”

Tears were still streaming down his face as he shrugged and stared at their hands. “I don't know,” he said, so quiet it was hard to hear. “The Jessica I thought I knew would never … but I didn't know this Jessica at all. So.”

Lucy marshaled her thoughts. She had to try to convince him there was at least a very good chance Jessica's pregnancy had been a lie. “Well,” she said, hoping this wasn't just going to make things worse, “I know there's no way to be absolutely sure, unfortunately. I wish there was. And either way, I hate that this happened, and I'm so, so sorry. But … have you thought about the fact that there was definitely no way for her to know she was pregnant before she left?”

He didn't reply right away, and his expression didn't change much from grief and guilt when he did speak. “You mean, even though she acted so sure about it? And convinced me right away?”

Lucy nodded. She hated to think back to the morning that Agent Christopher and Mason had revealed the Rittenhouse photos. Wyatt had reacted with defensive, angry, desperate insistence that his wife wasn't a traitor, and had absolutely refused to see any of the evidence against her.

“I have wondered,” he said finally. “But the problem is, even if she didn't know for sure then, she could have really thought she was, and gotten a test or something afterward.”

Of course he would have thought of that. “You're right, she could have.” She took a breath. “There's also the fact that-- I don't know if you looked, and I don't blame you if you didn't, but … she would have been, what? Four months along at least?”

His face twisted for a moment, but he agreed.

“She wasn't showing at all, Wyatt,” she said firmly. She had made herself look as carefully as possible, under the circumstances. She knew he couldn't, so she had to – and she was pretty sure the rest of their team had looked as well, for the same reason. “She-- Nothing about her had changed, physically, in any way that was visible.”

At that, he managed a ragged breath and raised his eyes to hers. “Really?”

“Really.” Lucy kept meeting his eyes until he looked away again. The horrified guilt had lessened a little, she thought. That was something. Whether it was enough or not...

The two of them were quiet for a while. Despite how exhausted she was, Lucy knew she wasn't going to get back to sleep now. Or at least, not unless she started to have less reason to worry about Wyatt.

“How's your head?” she asked eventually.

It looked like the sedative might be starting to pull him back under, but Wyatt was fighting it. “It's … okay,” he said, frowning and forcing his eyes back open. “'M sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” she said, reaching out before she could stop herself to run her hand through his hair. It had been a long time since she'd last done that – and the circumstances then had been just about the polar opposite of what was happening now. “You should get some more sleep, anyway.”

Though he clearly didn't want to give in, Wyatt muttered an acknowledgment. She kept running her hands through his hair. It was soothing for both of them, she reasoned. Then, just as Lucy thought he might have dropped off, he opened his eyes one more time. “Maybe there's a way to be sure,” he said, an edge of desperation pushing past his grogginess. “A way to know.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows. “What way?”

“We did it once, to save Rufus.” He must have seen her alarm, because he went on, “I-- I don't mean we should try to save Jessica, too. I just mean--” His voice cracked. “I just mean, some of us could go back. Try to get a blood sample.”

“Oh.” That was … possibly worth consideration. They would just have to go back for a very brief moment. And if they timed it perfectly, it wouldn't even have to mean crossing their own timelines again. It could work by going to a point on the timeline right after their past selves had left. An innocent child's life was at stake, after all. And if the results came back positive, then maybe they could go back to some other point, and find some way to take Jessica out in a way that wasn't fatal. Lucy just had to not think about all the other implications of a positive result right now.

“I know this whole thing is a mess,” Wyatt said then, quiet and terribly sad. “Figuring out some way to go back and save a Rittenhouse agent's kid would only make it a hell of a lot messier. But if she was...”

He screwed his eyes shut again and stopped talking. Lucy resumed her hand's motions through his hair. “I understand, Wyatt,” she told him. “But we don't have to figure it all out right now.”

Gradually, he relaxed, and his breathing evened out. Lucy sighed. She had sort of hoped the team would never have a compelling reason to go back in their own timelines again. It hadn't been fun, even aside from the absolute mind-bending insanity of her and Wyatt's future selves being there. But if a child of Wyatt's did exist (or had existed, before today), that was compelling enough.

~

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear, I really, really hope/believe Jessica was lying, and that there's no kid.  
> Also, profuse apologies for any historical inaccuracies and/or inaccuracies about Dublin. Feel free to correct any of my mistakes.
> 
> On another note, more is coming on my other fic, "Shadows of the Past."


End file.
